Thanksgiving.

Oh, to say that Thanksgiving was a fiasco would be a complete understatement. A holiday with a toddler, especially one who is getting over a cold, is better known as a Total Disaster. But we survived. And we tried all sorts of delicious experiments in the kitchen! My favorite had to be the pumpkin pie. Daphne's favorite was the mashed potatoes.

Also, the tofurky was excellent and I will be using that marinade again next year. I am so not one of those measuring spoons kinda gals, but it was basically soy sauce, lime juice, garlic and a pinch of brown sugar. It sat in there all night and then roasted in it for two hours the next day, with a slapdash of delicious herbs on top - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (yup.). Along with cumin, because I love the stuff, pepper, celery salt, paprika, more minced garlic and a dash of cilantro. Yum!

The pumpkin pie was a simple vegan pumpkin pie recipe with tofu. Nothing very fancy about it. But what made it super delicious was what I put on top! I cheated big time and used Nature's Path Organic Pumpkin Flax Plus Granola Cereal. Just threw it right on top and baked. What I believe I will do next time is to broil it for a few minutes so it gets good and crispy on top.

We also made a bread pudding! Oooh it was delicious. I bought some run of the mill raisins from Whole Foods, the 365 Organic brand and some of that ever so scrumptiously evil Silk French Vanilla Creamer. Mmmmm. The recipe called for rice milk, but I thought the french vanilla would make it taste a little bit more like the bread pudding from my childhood. I didn't get any pictures... and it has been devoured, so you can just make up in your head what it looks like. But here is my scrumptiously modified recipe for vegan bread pudding :]

Bread Pudding
4 slices of bread, torn into chunks
3 cups Silk French Vanilla Creamer
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp vanilla
1tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup raisins

Throw the bed into a baking pan, mix all of the other ingredients together in a bowl, pour on top of the bread and mix it... mix it good. Then... bake at 350. After about 15-20 minutes, I took it out, stirred it up (because all of the liquid and the raisins will settle in the bottom) and stuck it back in the oven. This was amazing. The juices really plumped up the raisins, giving them this delicious flavor that I could not get enough of.
However, next time I think I may omit the brown sugar and make a cinnamon icing and mix it in instead. Give it more of that sticky, mushy, creamy look of bread pudding from my childhood.


So, the Thanksgiving food was amazing. But the pitiful, cranky baby... not so much. Although she did have a blast playing with her cousins Legos table for about an hour.

Eeeep now it is time for gingerbread cookies, cranberries aplenty and Celebration Roasts. Yippee! I love this time of year :]

I disappeared! Also, cookie dough!

Alright. I disappeared. Sorry about that (is anyone reading this anyway? Nope :])

So, I've been on this delicious sweet kick lately. Severely enjoying my "world's fattest vegan" status. I'm pretty sure I've got it. Anyway! Two of my most recent inventions were: pumpkin spice sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookie dough balls (Yes!)

I was searching everywhere for a recipe for pumpkin sugar cookies that you could use cookie cutters on.. and couldn't find a single one! So I got fed up, found my original sugar cookie recipe from when I made them for Daphne's birthday party (they were adorable! little pink strawberry sugar cookie giraffes. Yum! ) and tweaked it a little bit.

Pumpkin Spice Sugar Cookies
1 cup pumpkin
1/2 cup Earth Balance
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 egg substitute
3 cups unbleached flour (I used whole wheat)
1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice

You just mix everything but the powdered sugar together. Sprinkle your surface with the powdered sugar and then roll your dough out with a rolling pin while your oven is preheating to 350. People always suggest that you roll it out and then let it sit in the fridge for x hours. I'm too lazy for that business. I just go straight from there. Get it the width you want, then cut away!

These cookies turned out very cake-like, so I suppose it's a good thing we were planning on icing them anyway. They were scrumptious and Daphne loved them - so they get the Vegan Baby Seal of Approval!

Also, I hope you guys are enjoying my exceptionally professional pictures :P

The second recipe... eep. Fat Girl's Surprise. It was to die for. I had to give them away just to keep from eating them. Who doesn't love cookie dough? And when it's vegan... you don't have to worry about that whole salmonella thing. Yuck! So... here goes :]

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls
For the cookie dough:
1 cup Earth Balance
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 egg substitutes
2 1/4 cup unbleached flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Chocolate chips (I prefer Enjoy Life)

Cream the "eggs", butter, sugars and vanilla. Add in flour, salt and baking soda and mix well. Throw in chocolate chips. Roll the cookie dough into balls and put them on a baking sheet in your fridge (for a few hours) or your freezer (for half an hour).

Melt down some chocolate chips and once your cookie dough is good and firm, take them out and either drizzle the melted chocolate onto the balls or roll them in the chocolate, then put them back on the cookie sheet (I actually found it easier to use wax paper underneath them). Stick back in the freezer... or fridge if you're not lazy and eager.

And in half an hour (or more, if you went the non-fat girl route :]) you will have... this: